Leadership Development

Leadership Development

There’s no doubting the importance of leadership in companies. Leadership makes the difference between a firm that bumbles along and one that excels. It makes the difference between a firm that exists for today and one that invests in the future. Leadership development is essential for all managers.

TimelessTime consultants have trained thousands of managers to lead. Those with the right attitude can learn to lead. TimelessTime can help you and your managers excel.

Learning Leadership

Less than 20% of all those in leadership positions are trained. The others are ‘accidental’ managers. They are experts in the technical aspects of their firm but have not taken the time to learn leadership. That’s where specialists like TimelessTime consultants come in. Leadership development is essential for all managers.

Doing Leadership

Leadership is best understood through science. Leadership plays on followers’ motivation. It’s a series of techniques developed from leadership theories. Leadership success comes from learning those techniques within a feedback framework. Feedback helps determine what techniques work in the local context.

Defining Leadership

There are many definitions of leadership. Some say it’s a process of making sense of business situations so that staff can see goals clearly. Others say that leadership is about influencing staff to achieve great things. Yet more say it’s about the removal of roadblocks that all followers find obstruct them day to day.

But possibly the simplest way to look at leadership is as an intervention: an intervention in a follower’s life such that their motivation is improved and their efforts focussed to success. In that intervention, leaders must engage with followers and make impressions on them.

We’re All Leaders

Traditionally there’s the vision of a central actor doing the leading, like the military stereotype, out front leading the charge. There’s more interest today though on distributed leadership where all staff take the role from time to time – like the engineer who steps forward to lead the tender response or the product manager who leads his or her product to market prominence. Though not hierarchical leaders, both these examples exhibit necessary situational leadership.

For the success of all our firms, we are all leaders.

Leadership Approach

Leadership works at the interpersonal, group and organisational levels. The way leaders work should differ with context and level. Managers in firms make choices about the form of leadership they use.

Classically there’s transactional leadership, trading favours to get things done. Then there’s transformational leadership with its charismatic leader providing intellectual stimulus to the staff. Professional leadership fits schools and law firms while moral leadership applies when the firm is on a mission. And managerial leadership fits when there are processes to build and day-to-day tasks to do.

And by the way, just to be absolutely clear – managers lead and leaders manage.

Leadership Development

Leadership can be learned. Leaders can be developed. Leaders need interpersonal skills to work with staff. They need conceptual skills to perceive the way forward. And they need technical skills to understand the processes, techniques and methods to make the company fly. Traits like stress tolerance, inquisitiveness and open-mindedness can be improved.
TimelessTime’s leadership training programmes use a mix of training methods including active practice of skills, action learning, use of feedback, executive coaching and mentoring, each developed to fit the leaders and the leadership scenario. Leadership development is essential for both managers and staff.